Dance •
Dance Umbrella (16 March - 2 April)
A little coup in Woking
Jann Parry
Woking's claims to fame are the size of its cemetery and shopping centre and the frequency of its trains — express, 'semi- fast' and stopping at stations you don't want to know about. For outsiders, Woking is essentially a place of transit — an image the borough council is determined to change.
To celebrate the borough's 100th anniversary, the councillors turned to cul- ture. While Croydon has been relying on Picasso to raise its profile, Woking (in con- sultation with the Arts Council) opted for a Dance Umbrella festival. For three weeks, tram 16 March - 2 April, shopping malls, leisure centres and the Peacocks arts-and- entertainment complex were filled with dance of all kinds: tap, ballet, tea dances, Choreographed juggling and abseiling, capoeira, tango — and Mark Morris, who belongs in a category all of his own; Woking's coup was to present the Mark Morris Dance Group at the start of a British tour that did not include London. Morris's reputation for making vastly enjoyable choreography has gradually spread throughout Britain, thanks to his Close association with the Edinburgh Festival (where he returns for the fourth time later this year). Scotland, however, is another country, so Woking profited from the fresh barrage of publicity surrounding his company's first visit to south-east England.
On Morris's first night, the opening of the Umbrella festival, dance-loving Lon- doners piled into dedicated carriages on trains out of Waterloo (courtesy of South East Rail), clutching party bags and free umbrellas (courtesy of Woking Council). French regional festivals regularly lay on a train de la dance from Paris, but this is the first time the idea has been copied here, to the disgruntlement of regular commuters. V.I.P.s' party bags included chocolates and a mini-bottle of champagne, packed into a W.B.-crested 'tuck box' — a very British concept that baffled Morris's American company. One of the pieces Morris chose as an introduction to his work was his all-Ameri- ,,.ca!1 ' Going Away Party', to music by Band girls and his Texas Playboys. Boys and girls sashay blithely together, in an affectionate send-up of sentimental country-and-western culture; some of their encounters are subversively rude but Morris himself, stashed into white jeans and a rhinestone shirt, remains pure and lonesome.
His solo to Gershwin's piano music, `Three Preludes' (which he also gave in the final Umbrella gala) is a fantasia on a theme of dancing — as a hoofer, a flamenco artiste, Fred Astaire, Ruth St Denis, the puppet Petrushka. When Mikhail Baryshnikov did the same solo with his White Oak Project, he looked dapper, elegant. Morris, anything but dapper, is an outsize diva in spats.
His 'Love Song Waltzes' and 'Grand Duo', which opened and closed the programme, are two sides of a picture showing the company as a community. In the Brahms' waltzes, love is shared amongst them; in Grand Duo, to Lou Har- rison's furious music for piano and violin, the tribe pounds itself into a collective frenzy, • releasing a stomach-churning energy. Weak at the knees, audiences stag- gered out into the shopping mall, glancing apprehensively at the teenagers hanging out there, in case they too ganged up, motivated by a single, fearsome impulse.. .
By day, the Peacocks mall is a peaceable enough place, populated mainly by browsers and children however, once Roc in Lichen, the French group of 'vertical dancers', set up their wires and harnesses in the 20-metre high atrium, crowds of spectators materialised from nowhere. Roc in Lichen's brief, dangling performances of `Pigeons a la tomb& d'echalotes' (Pigeons in a Pickle') were not exactly breathtaking — but they drew attention to the Dance Umbrella and left plenty of time for shopping.
Performances in the New Victoria The- atre and the Rhoda McGaw studio space were designed to attract people who thought they didn't know much about dance but were prepared to give it a try. The Gandini Juggling Project (bats, balls and stylised moves), CandoCo (wheelchairs and challenging choreogra- phy) and RJC Dance Theatre (reggae, jazz and gospel music) drew packed hous- es, as did the tap show, Hot Shoe Shuffle, and Scottish Ballet's Swan Lake (decent, conventional, more notable for Jasper Conran's designs than for its dancing).
There was a genuine buzz of excite- ment in the foyers and cafes at the end of the mall — the great advantage of having so many activities under one, enormous roof. Woking Borough Council and its business partners were happy with their festival; so were the Dance Umbrella staff, who enjoyed the can-do attitude of the commercial world. As for me, I hang on to my free umbrella and fond memo- ries of Mark Morris's company — and sigh with relief that I'm no longer a late-night South East commuter.
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